by Ada Palmer
Dominic: “That … yes … yes, that should be enough. I’ll need to check with the other Acting Directors, but I believe … yes. We have a deal.”
MASON: “Would you really be in Hobbestown burning Cook in effigy if you weren’t busy doing this?”
Dominic: “Votre Majesté Impérial knows me too well. But I’m not going to give you a recording of me saying what I really want to be doing to Cookie, or to Sniper. And I’ll give you some advice to pass on to Mycroft and Martin too. This isn’t a threat, just a suggestion to lubricate our future interactions: if any of you catches the blasphemer before I do, call me and let me do the final deed. Mon Maître est mon Maître. It’s my right and duty to avenge the blasphemy against mon Maître—no one else’s right or duty—mine. Take that from me and you’ll birth an … inconvenient … grudge.”
Since I try to render everything in English, I have often struggled with the titles we closer servants use for He Who has so many. We His intimates are, as you must have observed, possessive servants, each craving to be somehow uniquely His. While any Mitsubishi may call Him Tai-kun or Xiao Hei Wang, any Spaniard Alteza, and any servant at Madame’s Jeune Maître, Dominic alone may use mon Maître, Heloïse mon Seigneur, Martin Dominus, and I would feel bitter jealousy if any (save my Saladin) shared my Ἄναξ. Even MASON respects this strict division, and not from an objective distance, either, for I think he too would quake if he heard one of Jehovah’s other fathers call Him Filius, or Him call another pater.
MASON: “More inconvenient for you, I think, than for me, canis.”
Dominic: “True. That’s why I sincerely hope you will take this advice, for my sake, and for yours. This is not a threat, Majesté. I do not imagine that I could destroy you, even if I had two Hives united behind me. I merely say this: if you crush me I will bite back, and you can’t afford to be wounded right now. All I want is to kill a worm we both want dead. It is a small petition.”
MASON: “I will consider it.”
I do not know what answer MASON gave in the end. The Emperor did publicly condemn hasty land laws like Odessa’s, and the Mitsubishi strike did end. The Mitsubishi voted as Dominic promised. A bash’s right to raise its children as it wished triumphed one hundred thirty-two against a bitter sixty-eight, casting Cook’s resurrected Set-Set Law back into the dust of history. As for Sniper—patriot, assassin, blasphemer, πολέμιος, self-styled tyrannicide—Natekari’s motion to declare Sniper an Enemy of the Alliance passed, barely, a technical majority, ninety-eight to ninety-four, with eight Utopian abstentions. A Whitelaw Tribune vetoed at once, and before anyone could move to overturn the veto, that strangest Senator, Olympic Champion Aesop Quarriman, very sensibly demanded that the Court examine the legality of a bill which stripped a Hive of the right to protect one of its own members. Now Sniper’s sideways death sentence lingers toothless in the Courts. Meanwhile, Dominic’s hastily appointed Acting Mitsubishi Senators can say with honesty: “I don’t support O.S. Look, I even voted to kill Sniper.” Nicely played, Dominic. You make Madame proud.
CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
Inviolable
Written August 4–5, 2454
Events of May 1
Hobbestown
TO THE OFFICE OF GRAYLAW HIVELESS TRIBUNE J.E.D.D. MASON, FROM THE OFFICE OF BLACKLAW HIVELESS TRIBUNE CASTEL NATEKARI 4/17/2454: A community of concerned Hiveless requests Tribune Mason’s attendance at a Town Hall Meeting to be held in Hobbestown City Hall at 4 PM UT on Friday May 1st, 2454, at which Tribune Mason will be asked to answer for their continued fitness for the office of Tribune.
All strangers feel the chill of exodus as Hobbestown’s silhouette looms up from the horizon, as when one emerges from the warm and comfort of a theatre to face real air. Civilization’s end. Here there is no zoo glass between us and the lions. Hive badges still armor visitors, as Roman citizens once marched through sprawling colonies armored by the threat of distant law, but he who would visit Blacklaw lands consents to witness murder in the street and place no blame. Here all things are possible, and all natives as honest as Saladin.
Hobbes: “Already! Oh, Jubilation! I had not dared hope to see so soon my backwards capital!”
Reader: “Backwards, friend Thomas?”
Hobbes: “Yes, backwards, Master Reader. My Leviathan aimed to describe and strengthen government, to remind ungrateful citizens why we so need it. Hobbestown is furthest from what I recommend of any place in history, and yet these Blacklaws call it by my name? I feel like I’ve spent my life training young architects, but been thanked only by the ones who gave it up to become tent-dwelling nomads.”
Reader (laughingly): “Ha! Well put, dear Thomas. Yet thanks is still thanks, and you know it is never bad to be remembered.”
True, masters, true, and this Blacklaw capital fixes Hobbes’s name in our age’s memory like a burn scar. A sentry nodded to us at the gate, rising from a comfortable stool and lifting an eight-foot guandao pole-arm, whose moon-bright blade glittered atop the shaft she could no doubt wield as organically as Sniper its epée or Ancelet his numbers. Hobbestown uses no uniform apart from a Blacklaw sash, nor could one quite call this sentry part of a militia, since when she rose to escort us she called her replacement, not from any guardhouse, but from the passersby, one of whom volunteered to take her stool and drew a brace of pistols. Perhaps ‘sentry’ is the wrong word—honor guard? There is a warning bell beside the guard’s stool, but it has never yet been used as anything but a reminder that, while ordinary cities blur into the bash’house-peppered countryside, Hobbestown’s gates and walls still mean what gates meant when the Mycenaeans raised lintels of cyclopean stone. That my Master did not tremble as we crossed the threshold proves anew He is not human.
“The Six-Hive Transit System welcomes you to Hobbestown. This area is governed by no law but the Eight Universal Laws, commonly known as Black Hiveless Law. Minors and visitors protected by a stricter legal code are advised to keep their Hive or Law insignia clearly visible at all times. To view the list of suggested customs posted on the Hobbestown gate, select ‘Blacklaw Customs, also called Natural Laws.’”
Hobbes: “Natural Laws? Are these my Natural Laws? Those nineteen rules found out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive to his own life?”
I: “Almost, Master Hobbes, almost. They are modeled on your list, but times and peoples change, and so too do the laws that Reason leads such peoples to.”
Hobbes: “Changed? Balderdash! Such Laws are immutable and eternal. To forget any of them leads inevitably to war. It can never change that peace is endangered if one man tries to reserve to himself some Right which he will not share with everyone else, or if, in cases of revenge, men dwell on the greatness of the evil past, instead of thinking of the greatness of the good to follow, and so let private vendetta grow into public ruin. Whether in my era, thine, or any, Mycroft, Peace and War and what creates them cannot change.”
That I dispute not, Master Hobbes, and rest assured, the alterations to your laws are not so great as you fear. The fundamentals are unchanged, but our age cares less about primogeniture or Right of First Possession than your contemporaries did, and since our mores are more ubiquitous, we can cover more types of transgression with fewer words. Hobbestown’s rules are carved, not posted, on her gates, and their honest roughness corroborates the rumor that her founding Rumormonger etched them with a pocket knife, not any artist’s chisel. Romanova’s eight Black Laws stand on the left gatepost, while on the right post stand Hobbestown’s Eight Customs, also Called Natural Laws, enforced by nothing more than mob retribution, and crowned here by the Blacklaws’ brave commandment:
STRANGER, GO TELL YOUR LAWMAKERS THAT, WITH THESE CUSTOMS, WE LAWLESS FEW LIVE WELL.
1. Here we endeavor sincerely to keep the peace, but when that fails, we defend ourselves with all the means at our disposal.
2. Here we remember that what we do to others, others can and will do to us.
3. H
ere we put reasonable effort into accommodating others, no more nor less.
4. Here, when we harm others, we either volunteer fair recompense, or accept vendetta; when we are harmed, we accept fair recompense, and do not let vendetta go too far.
5. Here we endeavor not to harm or monopolize communal things.
6. Here we do not act on rash rumor, but do heed well-weighed opinion.
7. Here we do not harm or hinder peacemakers, arbiters, ambassadors, or those working for the public good, nor do we undo their work without good cause.
8. Here those chosen to be arbiters try to be fair, and those who consent to have a disagreement settled by an arbiter accept the judgment, and let matters end.
Hobbes: “Fascinating. And tell me, Mycroft, how do my backwards children separate rumor from opinion?”
Reader: “No more for now, friend Thomas, you have interrupted long enough; indeed were you less a friend I would say ‘too much.’ I am the reader here, not you, and it is at my pleasure our chronicler serves.”
Hobbes: “Deepest apologies, Master Reader. Such excitement can make even me forget the deference due to sovereignty. Forgive me?”
Reader: “Forgiven, my friend, forgotten. Now let Mycroft press on, and show both of us the famous Blacklaw capital.”
“Straight forward, TM.” Chagatai glowed with pride as she stepped down from the car after our Master. Chagatai was still wearing her neat housekeeper’s uniform, formal enough for the grandest occasion. Over its crisp darkness she wore a coat, heavy, sweeping, the kind of cut that reminds us how coats evolved from cloaks and robes of office, with the blue-edged gray armband of a Tribune’s Escort pale on her sleeve in slightly silver silk. Her tasseled Blacklaw Hiveless sash—with our Master’s Tribunary crest in gray upon it—frisked about her right thigh, while at her left her cutlass bounced, plump in its scabbard, a heavy blade which rarely gets to play. If under this regalia Chagatai’s frame was a little over-heavy, her belly rounded out by cheerful dinners, the extra girth just made her so many pounds of force more fearsome. “Do keep up, Mycroft,” she chided.
Wert thou there too, Mycroft? Did not thy Emperor keep thee cloistered still in Alexandria?
At all other hours, yes, and his Son with me, but for this one journey it was easy to secure Caesar’s blessing. Hobbestown is, after all, the safest place in the world. Are you surprised? Two Blacklaws might duel to the death by daylight in her streets, but one who would break a law in Hobbestown, or harm a visitor guarded by some foreign law, reaps punishment unmatched in any court. A Blacklaw who did so would face real and lethal tortures from his fierce Lawfellows, vengeance for angering the Leviathans, while a Hive Member who dared break the peace in Hobbestown would face, first the repercussions of his native law, and then the eternal hatred of posterity, who would never forget the criminal who turned all culture to hypocrisy by proving civilized man more barbaric than barbarians. Not even Tully would dare.
“I’m coming,” I answered, forcing my unsteady foot across the threshold. It was not fear that slowed me, reader, it was the sight of marvels. At Hobbestown’s gate, for caution’s sake, all things reveal themselves: the many robot guardians which crawl and hover undetectably about the Porphyrogene uncloak, the Masonic guards who flank their Charge pull back their jackets baring hidden weapons, and the Delians materialize. All around me they appeared: coats of cold stone, of faeries dancing in the autumn, of the swirling deep, all with Apollo’s sigil on their backs, grim enough to remind us that the Sun is merely our nearest taste of violent starfire. I had known for weeks that they were with us, invisible, these alien angels, but to see them step into existence all at once, each trailing the dreamworld they seemed to have sprung from … it was the kind of magic one can never stop believing in. No matter how grim this war becomes, even if our sins drive all Utopians into hiding, if I go weeks without seeing them, years, yet to our dying day we who saw them even once will still believe they might appear again, like wishes out of nothing, at our time of need. You must believe in them too, reader—your ancestors walked this Earth when they did, saw them, touched them, passed down whispers. Perhaps a thousand years have passed since any glimpsed them, but a thousand years cannot erase the hope that faeries might return if our belief and need are great enough, or lost King Arthur, or Utopia.
“Thank you for coming, Jagmohan.” Tribune Natekari offered her Colleague a warm hand.
I know we must have walked the road from gate to Town Hall through Hobbestown’s streets, yet I remember nothing but the nowhere coats flanking the Most Precious Visitor.
“I come gladly, Tribune Natekari,” He answered. “You ask important questions.”
Blacklaw Tribune Natekari smiled her sharp smile, sharpened by the scar she will not let science remove from her left cheek. “You seem better today. Your English is better.” It was the warm observation of a familiar colleague.
“True,” He answered, “though I remain grateful that you allow Me My choice of inquisitor and translator.”
On ‘inquisitor’ He looked to smiling Chagatai, who was distracted now, distributing flirtatious glances among passersby. On ‘translator’ He looked to me. I suspect my bow looked more like a flinch as the Blacklaw Tribune’s eyes fell on me. Do you expect kinship in her glance? Do you associate, as many do, my savagery with her wild kind? No. Her eye holds the same horror any sane person feels toward Mycroft Canner. She does not know me, nor my Saladin, nor how we hold her kind almost divine, as wise Greeks held happy Diogenes, and all the Cynics strong enough to break free from the puppet strings and live. She only knows that I made the world more bitter, more afraid of killers, more afraid of her. I made her world worse. But Chagatai knows me, Chagatai behind whom I hide, her homecoming swagger shelter enough to make me brave as she and Natekari trade greeting kisses on both cheeks. The pair have crossed swords, I suspect, or had sex. Or both. It can be difficult to tell the difference.
Chagatai knew the Town Hall’s steps as perfectly as she knew the chapel-house she had kept for Jehovah in Avignon. That house was gone now, not burnt down like Madame’s, but too vulnerable to remain His home, so Ἄναξ Jehovah donated the property to a university, to safeguard its collections, moving Himself to Alexandria’s Sanctum Sanctorum.
Chagatai shooed our Master and myself like children through the Great Hall door as shimmering Delians spread to cover the exits with their sprites, and will-o’-wisps, and training. It felt like Olympus inside, reader, a hall of gods arrayed on creaking theatre seats which seemed to me like thrones. I do not mean universal Gods like Jehovah and His Peer, nor immortal gods like Zeus. I mean what you, Master Hobbes, named with reverence a ‘mortal god,’ that earthly power, charged to keep peace and defend its own, which answers to nothing between itself and the Immortal God above. States. Sovereigns. It is not possible to call them all Leviathans, tiny as they are, but each Blacklaw is as much a Sovereign as MASON. Oh, there was a balcony in the back of the hall for Hive Members, and some Whitelaws and Graylaws mixed in the back, but they were people, while the front rows seemed to my eye a ring of Emperors.
Thou canst not see it, Mycroft, but our Thomas here is smiling.
“Thank you for coming, all.” In lieu of a gavel, Castel Natekari thumped her podium with the heavy, enameled pen which has passed from Rumormonger to Rumormonger through Hobbestown’s colorful decades. It was in her office as Tribune that she summoned her colleague here this day, but her seat as hostess derives from her older office as the living encyclopedia of this black city and its (I cannot say citizens) inhabitants. Custom requires asking the Rumormonger’s opinion before a Hobbestonian embarks on any feud, and her advice keeps many a youth from acting rashly on a rival’s poison lies. Custom requires updating the Rumormonger on all gossip, and her patient perspicacity has recognized many a hidden mastermind when one name was involved by ‘chance’ in too many ‘accidents.’ Temperance she is, Prudence, Justice, and Force as well, ready to call her people to arms when a rotten bra
nch needs pruning. I have shown you lynch mobs, reader, or their bloody wakes at least. How many fewer—set-set and Servicer alike—might have died in Odessa if the Hives had shared the Blacklaw custom that one may not lynch anyone without first asking the best-informed person in town whether we’re being idiots?
“At Tribune Mason’s request, Blacklaw Euphrates Chagatai will conduct today’s interview, since I understand the Tribune is still recovering their full faculties of speech, and Chagatai has experience handling that.”
Chagatai shed her sweeping outer coat and took the podium with a swish of her nearly-as-sweeping inner one. “Thank you, Tribune Natekari. I have a list of submitted questions, but I’d like to ask my own first. Any objections?” She scratched her silvered stubble as she waited for consenting nods. “Good. First off, TM, do you believe you can still adequately fulfill your Tribunary duty to represent the needs of the Hiveless against the Hives when you’re so caught up in upper-level Hive affairs?”
How like a trial it would have seemed, the spectators’ eyes locked hungrily on the defendant, had He been one who trembled. “Is that the most important question?” He asked.
“No, but it’s what brought us to this room.” Nods supported Chagatai.
“Clarify ‘represent,’” He requested.
“Clarify ‘clarify,’” Chagatai reposted.
“Represent as agent or represent as symbol? Vous … you-tachi chose Me Tribune largely ut as symbol, to remind Earth that One Who enjoys such trust and honor from the Emperor, Chief Director, and other powers is nonetheless still a Graylaw. I have served as your Proof that Hiveless matter to the Hives. If it is as symbol that I represent the Hiveless, I am fit for office while I am still perceived thus, yet unfit should I come to be perceived otherwise. Since I do not know how I am perceived, I cannot answer more completely. Is that clear?”